


In Loving Memory

by closemyeyesandleap



Series: By Her Grave [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 2x22, Canon Compliant, Funeral, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Identity, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loss of Parent(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 22:04:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15301002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closemyeyesandleap/pseuds/closemyeyesandleap
Summary: Skye and Coulson bring Jiaying’s body to Milwaukee for burial. As they make the arrangements, Skye struggles with how little she actually knew about her mother.(Missing scene immediately before Skye and Coulson visit "Dr. Winslow's" Vet Clinic in the S2 finale and canon compliant with the grave from S5.)





	In Loving Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Please read tags as the funeral context may be hard for some.

“Name of the deceased?”

Skye shifted uncomfortably in the folding chair. The florescent lights gave the austere white room a sickly yellowish tint. “Jiaying, uh…” The bored man across the desk from her raised his eyebrows. To her left, Coulson squeezed her hand in encouragement.

She swallowed. “Jiaying Johnson.” 

“I’m gonna need you to spell that.” The undertaker reached into the desk and tore a scrap of paper, thrusting it at her. “Here.” Skye caught a glimpse of dirty fingernails as she took the paper.

Doubts flooded Skye’s mind. Was that what Jiaying would have wanted? Did she ever use the last name ‘Johnson’ or would she have preferred her Chinese surname…a name Skye didn’t even know? The weight of the unknown lay over Skye like the soil of the grave into which she was about to place Jiaying. Here she was, creating a grave marker for her mother, and the simplest details eluded her.

“Date of birth and date of death?” the undertaker droned.

Skye swallowed again. “I think I’ll leave those off.” 

The forged death certificate had dates, of course, but Skye didn’t want anything fake on her mother’s grave. She didn’t even know her mother’s date of birth. How many lifetimes had Jiaying lived before Skye burst briefly into her life? Skye felt again the weight of questions for which she would never know the answer. For all she knew, Jiaying had lived for centuries, rejuvenating every few decades with the elders’ sacrifices. A faintly sick taste filled her mouth. Her mother had lived such a long life, and yet she hadn’t even survived a month of knowing Skye. 

Skye felt toxic, fatal.

“That’s… odd. But OK,” the man answered, shaking his head. “Any message?”

“Message?”

“Yeah, the message. You know, most families, they like to write something nice about their loved one, ‘Always in our Hearts’ and all that crap.” 

Skye blinked at him. “Um, sure. Uh…”

“Here.” He reached back under the desk and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper. “Some common ones to choose from.”

Skye scanned down the list, her heart catching in her throat. Her eyes lingered over _Beloved Wife and Mother_ , and she had raised her finger to point it out when her mind flashed to the feeling of the energy seeping from her body. Beloved mother? Skye closed her eyes, and all she could see were Jiaying’s eyes, full of an icy relish, as Skye slowly faded in her grip. And beloved wife? Skye felt like she could hear the sickening crack of her mother’s spine being broken before she was crushed in Cal’s arms. Skye reopened her eyes and counted her breaths as the telltale buzzing began to fill her brain. The last thing they needed was an earthquake in a cemetery.

Skye’s eyes roved over the list again. “That one,” she concluded, pointing to _In Loving Memory_. The phrase was short and a little distant, but it felt like the best she could do––remember Jiaying for the woman she had been, before.

“Super,” the undertaker muttered sarcastically, unappreciative of Skye’s slow responses. “Well, I’ll send this over to my guy for inscription.” He consulted the computer. “Hm, electronic payment? I need your ID, the death certificate, and the burial order.” He held out his right hand and gestured with his index finger, urging Skye along. “Now we can get this show on the road.”

Coulson glared at him. “Not the way I’d put it,” he muttered. 

Skye was too numb to care about the undertaker’s blitheness and simply handed over the documents that Fitz had carefully forged the day before, along with a Wisconsin driver’s license bearing the name _Daisy Johnson_. 

Coulson had thought it best to use a fake ID with the same last name as Jiaying, to avoid adding additional suspicions to their already rather quick and unceremonious funeral. Skye supposed Fitz had thought he was being clever—or sweet?—setting the first name as Daisy. According to Jemma, Cal had been yelling it all over the lab the day he was captured. It felt weird, a fake ID with what should have been her name.

“Well, everything looks to be in order. You two can go wait by the plot. A team will come by in a few minutes and get it done.” He handed the paperwork and license back to Skye.

Skye and Coulson stepped out of the office into the bright light of the May morning. The air was still crisp, a chill breeze coming off the lake in the distance. Far from downtown, the surrounding area felt eerily quiet. Perhaps it was simply the atmosphere of the cemetery permeating the environment.

They walked in silence for a few minutes before reaching the plot. A grave had already been dug. Skye’s head spun a little as she looked into the gaping hole waiting to swallow the casket containing the woman who had been, for an instant, her mother. 

She fiddled with the driver’s license, still in her hand.

Coulson moved closer to her. “You OK?”

Skye sighed. “I’m… It’s just a lot, you know? I barely knew her at all. And after everything she did, it shouldn’t be so hard, but…”

“She was still your mother.” 

“Sure. I guess what’s hardest is just being here, with her…I mean, kind of with her, and just thinking…” Skye turned over the license in her hand and held it up to Coulson. “This would have been me, you know? If it weren’t for Hydra thinking that my mother or I could be some kind of weapon in their quest for world domination, this would be me. I’d be Daisy Johnson of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”

She glanced at the row of houses behind the trees at the edge of the cemetery. “I would have lived in a house like that, and I would’ve… well, who knows.” She kicked a patch of grass. 

“That isn’t my life. That’s what I told Cal, when we came here. There’s no point in thinking about what could have been, the life we could have had, because it didn’t happen. But now, being here again, after everything… I don’t know. It would have been a nice life,” she sighed and turned the license over in her fingers. 

Coulson nodded, his eyes full of understanding. He reached over and wrapped her in his left arm, the amputated stub of his left arm dangling awkwardly between them. 

After the hug, Skye continued, “back there, answering those questions—I don’t even know who she was, really. All I know is that in the end, all she cared about was power and revenge. More than what was right. More than me. She… she was doing good things, there at Afterlife. Giving people hope, guiding them, teaching them,” a tear rolled down her cheek, “teaching _me_ , but now I don’t even know how much of that was true.”

Skye gestured around at the cemetery. “I don’t know if this is what she would have even wanted. Cal said they wanted to raise me here, in Milwaukee, but I don’t even know if she’s ever even been here. Maybe I should have buried her in China. But even after everything, I couldn’t leave her so far away. I know it’s stupid, but I want her to be close to him.” 

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I’m just like Cal, aren’t I? Trying to put my family back together, even if my dad doesn’t know me and my mom’s in her grave. Some family.”

Coulson squeezed her shoulder and glanced around at the cemetery and then back at Skye. “I got to know Cal, a bit. On the drugs, he was crazy, sure, but I saw a lot of you in him.”

Skye scoffed. “Lucky me.”

“That’s not a bad thing. You have his heart, the compassion that made him a doctor and sent him overseas, the drive that pushed him to seek after what he loved even after everything seemed to be lost.” Coulson looked directly into Skye’s eyes. “And sure, he kind of lost his mind, but the person that he used to be was still there underneath it all. I didn’t really know your mother, but I’m sure that despite it all, in part, she really was the strong and kind leader you saw. Because you have those qualities in you.”

Skye nodded and hastily wiped her eyes. Four men approached, carrying between them the heavy casket that she knew contained Jiaying. With Coulson, she stepped aside and let the men slowly lower the casket into the grave. One of them looked at her, questioningly. She nodded, and they began to toss shovelful after shovelful of dirt over the casket, refilling the hole.

Coulson and Skye stood in silence as the men worked. Then, once the hole was covered once more, they nodded respectfully and retreated.

“Take however long you need,” Coulson murmured.

Skye stood at the side of the freshly-filled grave, contemplating Coulson’s words. Despite the biting pain of her guilt and longing, Skye felt comforted by the thought of carrying her parents inside her, with her. She would never live the life that Cal had so longed for, full of charter schools and ice cream and father-daughter dances, but she still had a future. Through her, they remained, in a way, alive. 

Her eyes settled again on the driver’s license in her hand, a relic from a world that never existed. She would never be “Daisy Johnson of Milwaukee, Wisconsin” with a suburban house and two doting parents. But she didn’t feel like “Skye, orphan in search of a home” anymore, either. 

_Daisy Johnson_ , she thought. Maybe the name, at least, didn’t have to be an alternate reality. In the name as in her genes, she could carry a little bit of them. _Daisy Johnson of SHIELD_. It sounded… right.

Skye––no, Daisy––looked up at Coulson and nodded towards Lola parked at the edge of the cemetery. “I’m ready.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first work in a small collection about Daisy and her mother centered around Daisy’s experiences at Jiaying’s grave, including a visit to the grave in S4 before seeing Robin and her thoughts as she digs up Jiaying to save Coulson in Season 5. The tone in each work will be quite different to match the context and Daisy's state of mind, hence the separate fics, but they all exist in the same universe.


End file.
